


Very Deliberately Waiting

by gloss



Category: The Simpsons
Genre: Chromatic Character, Community: femslash10, F/F, Future Fic, Hindu Character, Widowhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-02
Updated: 2010-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-12 03:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Our children are conspiring against us, did you know that?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Very Deliberately Waiting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bossymarmalade (maggie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggie/gifts).



> Title from Nikki Giovanni's ["Mothers"](http://www.ncat.edu/~hmichael/mother_p.html). Thanks to [](http://ms-treesap.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ms_treesap**](http://ms-treesap.dreamwidth.org/) for help and advice and to G for the gentle beta.

Manjula had always assumed that she would eventually go home. Later, not sooner, but assumptions have a way of turning themselves inside out. She had, for example, also always *assumed* that she'd marry Apu; and she had, but she'd neglected to form expectations beyond that fact.

And look where that got her: lady-cuckolded, then a widow at fifty. (Squishee-machine freeze lines were incompatible with Kwik-E-Mart branded bullets, it developed, at least so long as those bullets had lived inside one pre-diabetic, lovable fool of a husband.)

She'd always *assumed* that she'd be a mother. And she was, bankrupted and exhausted, transformed and exasperated in turn, by eight beautiful souls.

So she did not trust all that much, not any longer, in assumptions.

She misses home bodily, however. She misses her sister's squealing giggles and inappropriate jokes; the brown-purple bruised air at dusk and just before dawn; the sweet, pebbly texture of a pinch of jaggery melting on her tongue.

Yet when she returned for her father's funeral, she found herself missing *Springfield*, of all places – the neat, shady quiet of the town square; the hoot of freight trains that carried, like AM radio, across vast distances; even, especially, all the ghee-faced yokels and their silly, silly excitability.

Far too facile, irritatingly *American*, really, to say that her home, then, is in her heart, but the truth is closer to that expression than she'll ever admit.

She supposes, all in all, that that is a good thing, as the Burnside Estates is expanding, her building long ago went condo without her, and soon she'll be living – if she's lucky – in Sanjay's garden shed or the boot of Anoop's muscle car.

*

"I saw Priya last night," Lisa tells Bart when he finally calls her back.

Bart doesn't reply. There's a soft sound of scratching and shifting coming through the receiver. She's pretty sure she doesn't want to know what he's doing; she's relieved when the bleep-boops of a video game become audible.

"Priya?" She prompts him. "You dated her for a couple months? Took her to her prom so she could piss off her parents? Any of this ringing a bell?"

Bart says, slowly, "Pree...ya? Oh, *Priya*! Ha. That reminds me, the Baron says 'sup."

She can move away, build a life and a career and reputation, but sometimes it feels like she'll never know anyone she didn't already know back in Springfield. Determined not to get embroiled in the mess with Sandeep-call-me-the-Baron-or-else all over again, Lisa clears her throat, then raises her voice. "So I was thinking, maybe, what if Mom had Manjula move in?"

Bart bursts out laughing. "Good one, Lees! Yeah, *that'd* work."

He ought to know by now that that's only going to make her more determined. "But --"

"Mom gets squirrelly if *I* stay past my welcome."

"She does not, she's just --"

"Whatever," he says, attention skipping merrily away. "Heard from Mags?"

Lisa slides off her reading glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Not a peep."

*

Marge makes a long, meditative growl of doubt when Lisa floats her idea. She drove up to Springfield after her last seminar, so she's still in her professor's drag.

She feels like a social worker making an impromptu home inspection.

"Think about it," Lisa says. "You're just rattling around in the house, she needs a new place, it's perfect --"

Marge turns back to polishing the latches on the kitchen cabinets. The process is intricate, absorbing, and it involves an old toothbrush, three different pastes, and a vinegar and orange-oil rinse.

"Mom."

The toothbrush scrapes hard.

"Mom?" Lisa lightens her tone and tries to sound cheerful. "It was just an idea. I thought, you're friends already, it would --"

Marge places the toothbrush in the sink and rests her palms on the counter. Her back is a little bowed, her voice quiet. "Friends are for visiting. Not for living with."

Lisa doesn't know what to say to that.

"If they live with you," Marge continues, "they're not friends any more. They're..."

"Family?"

After a moment, Marge's head lifts and her shoulders straighten. "Hand me the paper towels, please."

Later, Marge finds herself remembering the time – it must be ten years ago now, or more, because Maggie was still in high school – that she had arrived early to pick up Manjula for Ladies Night at the Bowlarama.

She had interrupted Manjula doing her evening puja. Two small plates of food – banana chunks and Triscuits – rested on the shrine at the back of the living room, and Manjula was standing straight as a willow tree, lighting a small lamp.

Her faith lived at home, with her, ate her food and shared her space. Marge had always believed, without quite being aware of it, that God was rather like the dentist – harried and gruff, and you visited Him only at set times.

"May I help?" Marge asked when Manjula noticed her standing there.

Manjula smiled mysteriously and shook her head; her earrings brushed her neck. The lamplight revealed her face, soft and lovely, and, so far as Marge knew back then, unreachable.

*

The night before her regular badminton match with Manjula, Marge is unable to sleep. The bed she had shared for twenty years with Homer has never felt quite so *large*; she flings out one arm, then a leg, rolls onto her front and buries her face in the pillow. Nothing works.

Eventually, wrapping her robe around herself, she pads downstairs. For a moment, she thinks, longingly, of pouring herself a sherry. She warms a cup of almond milk instead. At some point, she developed a taste for the stuff. She has kept a carton in the fridge since well before Lisa went off to Haverford.

The house is empty; it has been for years. The walls might as well be cardboard and duct tape, the way it shivers in the night.

Homer had been a big man in every possible sense.

When her milk is finished, she rinses out the cup and leaves it in the sink. Returning upstairs, she checks each bedroom, just as she did when the kids were young. The rooms are anonymous now, ghost outlines of Krusty posters and certificates of achievement on the wall, plain bedspreads pulled into hospital corners.

When Maggie left home, Bart and Lisa teamed up and turned her bedroom into a studio for Marge. They're always doing things like that, convinced they know what's best for her.

Her easel is there, and a set of new paints, plump, never opened. A stack of sketchbooks waits beside a blank drafting table.

There was a time when, if she loved something, Marge painted it. Everything she loved drove her to the canvas. She didn't *think* about it. She just found herself doing it.

She needs to feel that drive again. She needs to let herself feel it.

*

Their badminton matches are slower these days, less pitched, though not for lack of competitiveness. But Marge has a bad hip, and Manjula's eyesight isn't what it once was, so they must take it easy.

They don't *like* that fact, but neither of them has ever been able to translate what they like into anything approaching a necessity. That's not how they operate.

Manjula's stroke is as strong and sure as it ever was. She leaps to return Marge's serve, and the sunlight through the tree dapples her long, slim legs. Her braid, shot through with silver, lifts like a punctuation mark behind her racket.

Manjula calls set at nine points; they switch sides, and now the sun is in Marge's eyes. She misses another three points and has to concede.

Sprung from her braid, Manjula's hair sticks to her forehead and neck in sweaty scrolls and curlicues. She mops her face with her favorite blue handkerchief and says, "Good match."

"Thank you," Marge replies. Politeness is automatic, easier than emotion or analysis.

"You gave up, however, and stopped trying entirely in the second match," Manjula continues, as she shakes out Marge's towel before handing it to her. It snaps into the sun, blinding for a moment. She stretches out a kink in her waist, then turns, balancing on one leg to stretch out the other. Sometimes it seems as if she's made of finer, more flexible material than the rest of humanity.

Glancing over her shoulder, her smile wide, she adds, "Though of course I would have won, regardless."

Marge squints, a little irritated, but hides it by burying her face in her towel. When she has mopped off her sweat, she is smiling again. "Come in for a drink?"

Manjula nods; there has always been something almost regal about her, as if she is never surprised at kindness or generosity. As if such things are, simply, her due. "Yes, thank you. I will."

Inside, the house is dusky-cool, almost sleepy. Manjula studies the postcards arranged neatly on the refrigerator and corkboard while Marge prepares their drinks. Ling and Maggie were backpacking in South America for a year; now they are in Austin, Ling back at school, Maggie busy being a freegan, whatever that is.

"I bought that syrup you mentioned," Marge says, setting Manjula's drink down on the table. Her hands twist around each other, birds settling in a nest, before she catches herself and smiles slightly. "Well, Lisa found it for me. There are so many *interesting* ethnic stores around the campus, and --." She stops herself, touches the back of her hair to fluff it up, then rests her free hand on the back of the chair. "Rooh Afza." She pronounces the brand name as if it is a denizen of the Hundred Acre Wood. "The syrup, I mean."

Almost suspiciously (though she would characterize it as *care*, not suspicion), Manjula sips the pink milk. It is cloying, spicy-sweet, pungent – exactly as she remembers it. She drinks more quickly.

Visibly relieved, Marge takes her seat and sips her lemonade.

They can be quiet together. Even at the start of their friendship, surrounded by crying babies and wailing toddlers, they shared this common quiet.

When their glasses are empty and they have cooled off, Marge busies herself at the sink. Over the running water, she says, softly, "Manjula..."

Manjula joins her at the sink, dish towel in hand. Marge hands her the first glass and breathes deeply, stoking her courage to raise the issue of living together.

"Our children are conspiring against us," Manjula says before Marge can speak again. "Did you know that? They are arranging for me to become your *boarder*."

There are worse fates, but Marge is startled enough that she can only say, "I'm sure it's not a *conspiracy*."

Manjula snorts delicately, wrenches the towel in and out of the glass, then sets it down and tosses the towel at the window. "It's disrespectful of them."

"They just want to help --"

"Hmph," Manjula says and turns to lean against the counter, one arm outstretched so her fingertips graze Marge's bare elbow. "I don't like it."

"I'm sorry?"

Manjula trails her first two fingers up over Marge's bicep, where the skin is loose and soft, but the muscle underneath still quite strong. "Do not apologize for others' terrible behavior."

It's something she has told Marge for years now. The "others" change, but the apologies continue to be offered.

"But I --" Marge stops herself, but not before Manjula reminds her, "Only one of your children may have managed to finish an undergraduate degree, but it is still appalling that mine should conduct themselves in such a manner."

"You can blame Lisa," Marge says. "If that makes you feel better."

Manjula considers it, her fingertips grazing Marge's arm, making her shiver. "All right, yes."

The glass is not yet fully rinsed, but Marge turns toward Manjula, tucking her hip against the lip of the sink, lifting her arm so that Manjula's hand slips down to her wrist, then into her grasp, their fingers lacing together.

"Would it really be so bad?" Marge asks. Her heart beats just beneath the surface of her skin, light as a shuttlecock, harder to catch.

Manjula lifts one shoulder in an elegant, subtle shrug. "Perhaps not."

Marge rests her cheek on Manjula's shoulder and closes her eyes when she feels Manjula's arm steal around her waist.

"I do not want your charity," Manjula says a little later. "Let us be perfectly clear about that."

Marge does not stir, except to press a light kiss on the side of Manjula's neck. "It's not on offer."

"Good." Manjula's tone is final, brooks no disagreement, and it makes Marge smile and want to rise into the air. There is such certainty in the woman, more than enough for two, with plenty to spare.

She is touching Marge's hair now, working her fingers into the stiff-sprayed curls. Everything loosens around Manjula: dishes don't finish rinsing, sentences trail off, Marge's hair droops and spills.

"Should we tell them?" Marge asks. "About us..."

"No," Manjula says, and moves her hand so that she's gently tipping Marge's head back, meeting her eyes, smiling that knowing smile. "I do not think they deserve to know. Not just yet."

Marge nods, and agrees.

Their kisses are usually slow, like this, and luxurious, like this, but, for once, they are both fully present. Marge isn't worrying about being seen through the window, and Manjula isn't balancing her checkbook, composing a letter home, and alphabetizing her grocery list during its term.

"Hmm," Manjula murmurs when they break apart. Their hands move restlessly over each other's waists and arms, hips and back.

Marge realizes they are grinning at each other. The joke is silent, and maybe the punchline doesn't make any sense, but their pleasure billows larger and larger, brighter and warmer.


End file.
